Violence continues

December 14, 2007

BAGHDAD (AP) - Families in a southern Iraqi city where a triple bombing claimed at least 25 lives buried their dead furtively, afraid of another attack and anxious for the dozens of wounded who remained hospitalized Thursday. In the northern city of Mosul, meanwhile, gunmen killed a woman who ran a beauty parlor out of her home, apparently angered by what they saw as a violation of Islamic tradition. Elsewhere in Mosul, two police checkpoints came under attack - at one, gunmen opened fire and killed four policemen, and at the other, militants tried to storm the roadblock but were shot to death before they reached it, police said. Mosul, an ethnically mixed 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, has seen a rise in violence that many blame in part on sectarian tensions there and an influx of militants who fled the security crackdown in the Iraqi capital. By contrast, Amarah, an oil-rich city about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, has largely escaped the sectarian bloodshed that has plagued Iraq. Now, some officials fear attacks like Wednesday's in Amarah could ignite fighting between powerful Shiite factions in the region, which reverted from British to Iraqi control in April.